Jeon Woochi

+ A good mix between classic Wu-Xiapian movies and time-travel humor. It never fails to deliver laughs or to impress with witty action. Scrolls, seals, ideograms and magic tricks dispensed by the terrific cast are used to serve both the action and the comic relief. No flashy CGI it's cool and discrete. (The audience burst in laughs when they did the old school 'white smoke' metamorphosis trick.)

• The film lacks a good editing though (a recurrent handicap in Korean movies). Despite the great acting of the cast, it tends to slow down when trying to develop the very secondary female characters. This is probably due to the presence of many Korean movie stars who always insist to get a lot of screen time for their characters even if that doesn't serve the storyline.

I'll give it a 8 because of all the good laughs and this very refreshing and magical atmosphere the movie provides. While Korea's grown famous for pushing to export crappy CGI movies out of sheer patriotism but this isn't one of them. Woochi actually delivers.

To make a long thought short: I've watched The Sorcerer's Apprentice first, and then the War of the Wizards the same evening. While the Disney flick was plain boring, I really enjoyed the Korean piece. Given, that the CGI is not 100% of the stuff, Hollywood's money can buy, it has all the rest I've missed in The Sorcerer's Apprentice. War of the Wizards has fun story, nice yeah-I'm-a-great-magician-fights (I loved the boss-fight). Summarised: The Sorcerer's Apprentice sticks to it's name: merely an apprentice compared to this lovely crafted Asian movie. Watch it if you like cool magician battles and have an eye and heart for eastern humor.

Combining fantasy, adventure, action and humour to maximum effect, this lively Korean film deserves to be seen by as big an audience as possible. Writer/director Dong-hun Choi, best-known for his excellent con-artist films THE BIG SWINDLE (2004) and TAZZA : THE HIGH ROLLERS (2006), takes an unexpected turn into fantasy/action territory, but again shows why he is such a highly-regarded film-maker. Using the time-travel premise that was well-used in films such as ICEMAN COMETH (from Hong Kong) and of course HIGHLANDER, WOO-CHI makes the most of the material, helped along by a strong cast and superior technical crew. Dong-won Kang (from SECRET REUNION, DUELIST, VOICE OF A MURDERER, and the very funny TOO BEAUTIFUL TOO LIE)is excellent as the title character, making a flawed, at-times quite vein person likable. The great Yun-seok Kim, who impressed audiences in RUNNING TURTLE and inparticular in the brilliant THE CHASER, is perfectly cast as Woo-chi's main nemesis. Su-jeong Lim (from Park Chan-wook's under-rated I'M A CYBORG, BUT THAT'S OK and the outstanding A TALE OF TWO SISTERS)is perfect as the object of Woo-chi's affections. It's also great to see Dong-hun regular Yun-shik Baek (TAZZA / THE BIG SWINDLE / THE ART OF FIGHTING / SAVE THE GREEN PLANET) make a very welcome appearance. With $200 million Hollywood productions failing to make the grade, it is wonderful to see a film like WOO-CHI deliver such high-class entertainment on a fraction of the budget. Fast-paced, exciting, very funny, and full of vibrant, involving characters, JEON WOO-CHI : THE TAOIST WIZARD will certainly be one of my best films of the year. One hopes it will get a proper international release (unfortunately the director's other films have yet to achieve a deserving release outside of South Korea).

I caught this movie on Netflix. Had never heard about it before, and was pleasantly surprised. The characters are deep, the dialogue is fun, the action is fantastic, the story great, and the special effects OK. Most impressive of all was the solid acting, especially during the final fight sequence. Lovely stuff.

This movie brings me back in time, into a dark movie theater, at the very end of 'The Matrix', back in 1999. It had such a promising ending, and then they announced sequels that turned out to be poor.

Even though 'Woochi' is not a sequel to 'The Matrix', it feels like a movie that successfully went where those sequels didn't go.

Highly recommended for those who enjoy fantasy, action, and a bit of time travel.

An action-packed Korean fantasy epic that charts the story of warring wizards transported to a modern city and the chaos they wreak therein, WOOCHI THE DEMON SLAYER sounds great when you see the story written out. Sadly, though, watching the actual movie is a different story altogether. WOOCHI THE DEMON SLAYER turns out to be a weakly-plotted comedy, full of irritating breakneck editing and general disregard for the usual conventions of cinema: it's overlong, rambling, trivial and most of all a bore.

The trailer sells this as a full-blown action movie but it turns out to be a comedy. Now, Asian comedies don't typically do well overseas, so I can see why the trailer was cut that way, but it's still a bit of a cheat. The humour isn't very funny and the script, including various evil wizards, travelling between dimensions, shape-shifting goblins and the like, is all over the place. The one thing the film does boast is some excellent special effects work in the form of above-average CGI, but the elaborate action scenes are spoilt slightly by the disjointed editing and general lack of cohesion. It's a shame, because if the comedy had been toned down and the drama upped, this could have been a very good film indeed; as it stands it's an overlong misfire.